


All the Pretty Words

by megyal



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Demons, Gen, Hiatus, M/M, Pre-Slash, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4588839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick is cursed. He needs help from someone who is conversant in Very Bad Things. That person, of course, is Pete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Pretty Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barefootstarz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barefootstarz/gifts).



> I haven't written anything FOB-related in a LONG time. However, I'm trying to finish things that I've promised to folks, and this is on my list of things to do. This was done for qldfloodauction@LJ (doesn't exist anymore), from a prompt by barefoot-starz@LJ. The prompt is at the end-notes.
> 
> This is set in an alternate universe, but during the FOB hiatus. Hope you enjoy it, and if there are any mistakes please feel free to point them out.

The small stuff wasn't really noticeable at all, not too much at first: the missing shoelaces; the wandering picks that showed up in random places (like in his shoes, which were decorated with mismatched shoelaces); the way all his keyboards refused to function for about ten minutes in a stretch; the weird way he was falling down nearly every other hour, nowadays. Patrick could find an explanation for most of these odd occurrences. He was disastrously forgetful and tended to misplace things when he was tired (and he was tired a lot nowadays, but not as weary as he was when he had been in the band). He would place objects in the wrong place, like his car-keys, spend hours muttering darkly to himself as he rummaged around for it, then blink when he saw it hanging on the rack where he kept a few mismatched tea-cups.

The clumsiness was easy to explain, too; he told himself that he'd lost quite a bit of weight, therefore his center of balance had probably shifted completely. Very scientific, so it wasn't surprising that he was tripping over unseen things, flailing about like a frantic heron. Completely understandable, after he'd gone through such drastic changes.

He still clutched tightly at the hand-rails of the stairs when going up or down, though.

Oh, and the fucking keyboards: something must have gone wrong with the power supply in all of them at once. Some element _must_ have gone weird in the wiring, a fluctuating surge that had thrown them out of whack. It took him a long time to fiddle around and reset them, and even after that his second favourite keyboard had this low, unhappy-sounding buzzing when he switched it on.

All annoying circumstances with perfectly reasonable explanations.

It was only during a recording in his own tiny sound-room that he finally admitted that something was terribly wrong. His microphone melted into a bubbling, foul-smelling column about two inches away from his lips, and an unholy screech erupted in his earphones, so loud that his ears rang for minutes after he ripped them away from his head. 

He had been cursed.

 _Fuck_.

\--

As far as curses went, it was relatively minor. For one, it was localized to the space around him: the things he touched, the ground he walked on. That was good, but Patrick desperately hoped that there wasn't a second, more malevolent component that would work on his body. It would be pretty awful to get boils on his balls, or flesh that melted from his bones.

Or he could wake up to long, yellowed toenails. For some reason, Patrick found that one particularly horrific. He was sincerely bemused at himself that he was so well-acquainted with intricacies of curses. He knew these these things because, of course, he knew Pete.

+

He called Andy first. He hadn't vocalized actual words to Pete in quite some time, and it seemed advisable to break himself into the act with an approximation to insanity, like a warm-up walk before the big race. However, when Andy picked up on the fourth ring and said, "Hey, man. What's up?" in his soft, slightly nasal voice, Patrick couldn't speak for a moment, because a strange lump had coalesced in his throat, made of a yearning that he could not entirely blame on the presence of a pesky curse.

"Patrick?" Andy raised his voice a little, trying to block out the other persons on his end. There were always other people around Andy, orbiting him like rude planets around an intensely serene sun. Patrick envied his ability to collect people. There was shouting, which increased both in volume and intensity until Andy shushed them sternly and then called Patrick's name again. "Are you there?"

"Yeah." Patrick cleared his throat and smiled a little. "Yeah, I'm here. Hey, Hurley."

"Hey, Patrick!" Mixon shouted in the background and then the entire party at the other end of the line set up such a cacophony of happy greeting (including a pretty detailed list of lewd suggestions that Patrick was sure he would never consider).

Andy said, "Shut the fuck up," in the kind of tone one would use to suggest drinking some iced tea on a cool day, and then clarified: "Not you, Patrick."

"Yeah, I know," Patrick said and started to laugh. Suddenly, it felt easy; simple. Comfortable. Like fitting the last puzzle-piece in the exact place it needed to be. "What's going on? With you, I mean?"

Andy hummed, a flat but happy melody and said, "Tour, man. Starting next week, it's gonna be some fucking epic shit."

Someone echoed, _Epic shit!_ and then cackled.

"Joe's coming down for a few days," Andy went on, smoothly ignoring his loud audience. "From tomorrow. Radical hangs."

"Awesome," Patrick said, and he meant it. Andy, who really seemed to thrive anywhere as long as he was with his friends, did best on tour. "That's great."

"And you?"

"I think I'm cursed," Patrick said and exhaled heavily. There was a short, considering pause, in which Mixon apparently discovered that someone had been at his precious stash of chocolate milk and was stirring up a huge issue about it.

"Cursed." Andy's voice seemed to move over each letter of the word individually. "Did you call Pete?"

No, he didn't call Pete, because...well, he had no good reason as yet. He wasn't _afraid_ of calling Pete, either, it was just that--with everything they both had going on, it was---

"You didn't call Pete first," Andy stated and Patrick fought not to roll his eyes at the heavy tone of disquiet. "Okay. Want me to call him for you?"

"No!" Patrick burst out and then felt his cheeks burn. He wasn't a teenager anymore, awkward in his own space and well aware of it. "I'll do it, I'll just--"

"--I just don't get why you'd call _me_ , first," Andy mused in an absent little voice. "I mean, Pete's the expert at things like this, I don't--"

"It's not that I don't want to call Pete," Patrick spoke over his muttering, because they were used to having up to six different conversations at once. "I wanted to, I'm _going_ to, but it's. Like breaking into house, I guess. Sometimes you want to be subtle and pick the lock, instead of kicking down the door."

"Poetic," Andy said, and he sounded as if he was grinning. "And violent at the same time. I approve of this odd and confusing message."

Patrick sighed. "I'll call him. I just wanted to hear from your voice, I guess. Verbal support."

"That's so nice of you," Andy said, because he was apparently someone's eighty-year-old grandmother. "You do that. And I'm glad you called me. Love you, man."

 _No homo!_ someone else screamed and Patrick could feel Andy rolling his eyes from the other end of the connection.

"Call him," Andy said and then hung up.

+

Patrick called Pete. He had to call him _twice_ , as a matter of fact, because the first call rang without any answer and went straight to voicemail. Pete didn't have a fancy voicemail message either, just an automated system that informed him in crisp tones to leave a message for the other party. Patrick rang again, and Pete picked up on the fourth ring.

"Patrick," Pete said in a rough voice, as if he had been sleeping, or shouting. It might have been both, considering the kind of dreams Pete had when he actually got some sleep.

"Pete," Patrick answered, low and quiet. He shook his head at himself and then jumped as the phone buzzed loudly in his ear, like a raucous, digital laugh. "Fuck."

"What was _that_?" Pete asked, and he sounded wide awake now. "Stump, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm...fuck it." Patrick actually squared his shoulders. "Pete, I'm cursed."

A silence so long and deep emanated from the phone that Patrick was half-convinced that Pete had simply put down the phone and gone back to sleep.

"Still here?" he asked, laughing in a half-strangled manner. The phone trembled threateningly in his hand, and got very warm. If it kept that up, he'd have to toss it so that it wouldn't burn his palm. This was one super-persistent curse.

"Yeah. Still here." Pete sounded as if he was moving around and Patrick heard the quick rustle of cloth. 

"I need your help," Patrick said, and hissed as the phone got icy-cold. "Can you come?"

"Sure," Pete said without hesitation, but there was a kind of resigned quality in his tone that hurt and annoyed Patrick at the same time. He tried to push those emotions away to where Pete wouldn't find them if he was truly looking, but they struggled against him in ways he hadn't experienced since he was a teenager.

"Look, if you can't come, or you're busy--"

"I'm not busy," Pete said, but his words were cut short at the ends, sharpened to points.

"You sound as if--"

"I said I _wasn't busy_ ," Pete said, and then let out a long, tired exhale. "Are you going to summon me or do you expect me to take a flight out from LA? 'Cause if it's door number two, man, you're buying the ticket."

Patrick exhaled just as heavily. "I'll summon you."

"Remember the symbols? And the incantations?"

"Yes," Patrick said from between his teeth.

"Sweet," Pete said in a way that indicated that it was not particularly sweet at all. "See you in five," and he abruptly hung up.

+

Patrick was about seventeen when he found out about Pete's demonic heritage. It was kind of a big deal, despite what Joe and Pete claimed.

"I'm not even full-demon," Pete called through the door of the bathroom in which Patrick was sequestered. "That's actually a lie, though. Patrick, open the door."

"What, so you can _eat me_?" Patrick was trying to escape through the small window and get back to his own fucking house. What the hell was his mother thinking, allowing him out with _Pete_? Anybody could look at him and tell that he had freaky powers that he used to stare down guys who had been harassing Patrick after they'd done a few covers at this lame house-party. The staring had been bad by itself, but then Pete's eyes had gone dark all over; when the guys' jeans had caught fire _by themselves_ , that was when Patrick had decided that he would rather not be in a band with Pete Wentz...no matter that it was _Pete Wentz_ and every time he stared at Pete Wentz's gleaming brown eyes, Patrick felt a little lightning dance in his bones at the possibility that this could be something _big_.

Maybe Pete had made lightning dance in his bones. On purpose. As a demon joke, or something.

"That's gross," Pete said. "Why would I eat you? Unless you mean _eat-you_ eat-you, which in that case I'd like to reconsider. You're a sweet little dude."

"Shut up!" Patrick yelled, blushing even as he was attempting to escape.

"Patrick," Pete said and he sounded very young. "I won't hurt you. I promise, just....stop trying to open that window, it's fucking stuck."

Patrick gave up on the stubborn latch, and sighed. "It's not stuck."

"And I can open this door if I want. But I won't, because you don't want me in there with you right now. But I want you out here, with me."

Patrick bit his lip, and stepped very carefully out of the bathtub.

"You can bind me, if you want," Pete said. "That way, you're _sure_ I'll never physically harm you. Not that I would ever, but if you want to..."

Patrick's hand was on the handle of the door at this point. Pete hadn't looked at him when Patrick finally opened the door. He had been leaning on the wall next to the jamb, and staring down at his sneakers. Some time after that, Patrick would muse that maybe Pete had used his crazy abilities to sweet-talk him out of that bathroom. At this point of the internal musing, however, he had been sitting in the back of Joe's dad's car with Pete, who had taken his hands and showed him how to write symbols in the air.

"There's, like, power all around," Pete had said as the air shivered visibly around him, like it would over a hot road. Patrick felt no heat, though. It was actually a bit cold. Pete had closed his eyes as Patrick had finished the final incantation, breathing deeply.

"Power?" Patrick had croaked out, fingertips still tingling. He wanted to brush them over Pete's cheek and chin, see if he could leave marks. He wanted _so much_ , and he wasn't even sure what he wanted.

Pete opened his eyes and stared at Patrick."Yeah. It's just how to channel it. Energy, whatever. Humans do it all the time, with their fucking emotions. Without even thinking, too. You can channel it with this," and here, he reached out and touched Patrick's throat. Patrick was so entranced with Pete's intensity that he forgot to flinch away. "Direct it with this," Pete said, and tapped the area just beneath his own collarbone.

"Heart," Patrick deadpanned. "What the hell is this, Captain Planet?"

Pete blinked at him, then burst into long, coarse laughter. "He's a hero, fuck you, man," he choked out before descending into uncontrollable chuckles again.

"How do demons come to earth?" Patrick had whispered to him when they'd finally located Joe to drive them home. "Are you....like, _good_?"

"Do I _look_ good to you?" Pete whispered back, and then grinned ferally. Patrick actually looked him up and down, as if there was a gauge in his head which measured these things. Pete's grin did not lose the wild edge. "Angels fall down. And if you give them a good enough reason, demons can fall _up_."

+

Summoning Pete took energy, but not anything greater than what Patrick spent to perform for an hour or so. Summoning Pete _plus_ baggage (physical, not emotional, but that was a thought, wasn't it) was a bit more strenuous, though. Patrick thought he could be forgiven for being a bit cranky when Pete rose up out of the double-circle chalked into the floor of Patrick's bedroom carting a large piece of designer luggage in a dubious shade of gray.

"That's a big suitcase," he observed, watching Pete's form coalesce from wisps of grey smoke into a vague human shape, before solidifying into a body and a stance which were almost as familiar to Patrick as his own limbs. Pete's skin seemed caked in a layer of warm ash, which flaked off and floated down; before they touched the floor, they wispedwhisedpered away into nothingness.

Pete just stared at him for a long beat. He sported a fairly obnoxious jacket, clashing colours and patterns in the hood. It looked like something a tiny Godzilla would wear. He also had on his shades, which was kind of inexplicable since Patrick was sure he'd pulled Pete from the darkened room where he had been sleeping. Pete reached up and pulled off the dark glasses, revealing eyes still completely obsidian from the summoning. They bled back to that familiar white-and-brown in a matter of seconds.

"I'm a big person," Pete finally said, and smiled. "Only on the inside. Of my pants."

" _That_ never gets old," Patrick said, keeping his tone bland and dry. He smiled in return, though. "Hey."

Pete's expression was unreadable in a way Patrick had never seen before. "Hey." 

Patrick stepped towards him, intending to help Pete with that enormous bag, but Pete shifted in front of it, shaking his head.

"Leave it. Hold still for a minute, lemme take a good look at you," he said and folded his arms across his chest.

"You sound like some aunt," Patrick tried to joke, but he did as Pete asked. "As long as you don't go pinching my cheeks, we're good."

"Hm." Pete said nothing more for a few moments, but he was as good as his word; his 'good look' was an intent inspection of Patrick and the space immediately around his body. Now and again, his eyebrows would hastily confer with each other before his brow smoothed out again. Patrick took the chance to stare at him, too: Pete looked tired, but oddly well-rested at the same time. The new band was good for him.

"How's--"

" _Shhh_." Pete, who seemed to have been staring _through_ Patrick, now focused directly on his face with a slight frown, frowning slightly. "Come on, man. When you talk, it messes with the energy flow. Just shut up for sec."

 _Fine_ , Patrick huffed mentally, and tried not to shift around too much. It was hard not to, with Pete's regard so completely on him. He, but he managed to endure until Pete looked away, nodding to himself.

"What's the verdict, doc?"

Pete looked back at him; one corner of his lips quirked expressively. "You look good, Patrick."

Patrick blinked and Pete waved a hand around in a dismissive fashion.

"I mean, there's this hella curse on you, I don't even want to know who you've been pissing off, but you look good."

"Oh." Patrick refrained from licking his lips, because it was an action Pete's gaze always seemed drawn to, but it was a close call. He smiled instead, drawing on a new persona he was tentatively constructing in his mind: someone who knew that they had something amazing to offer to the entire world, and damned if they weren't going to let everyone know it. "I don't even know any other demons like you but, uh. Thanks a lot, man."

Pete raised his eyebrows, but said nothing in response to that. Instead, he bent down to retrieve his bag, and slung it over his shoulder. It looked too huge for him to be able to do that, but it happened. He slid the shades back over his eyes and pursed his lips.

"I'm going to go back to sleep. We'll sort it out in the morning." With that, he sauntered to Patrick's door and exited. His footsteps clomped down the narrow hall to the guest bedroom, and Patrick heard the sounds of the other door opening and closing gently. Patrick shut his own, staring at the wood for a long beat before heading to his own bed.

It broke around him at around four a.m.

+

"My bed broke down on me this morning," Patrick informed Pete in an accusing voice as he stumbled into the kitchen. "Like, into firewood. Seriously."

Pete shrugged, his shoulders shifting under the soft-looking material of his grey shirt. "I heard," he murmured, staring at the circles he stirred into the milk and cereal with his spoon. "You could have come into the guest bedroom with me." He didn't glance up into Patrick's face as he said this, but one side of his mouth crooked up into a wry-looking grin. A strange, hot feeling rose up in Patrick's chest, and he was sure that it was easily displayed on the canvas of his skin. To hide it, he turned towards the fridge, reaching for the gleaming silver handle

...which came off in his hand. Patrick sighed, and tossed it onto a nearby counter. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Pete grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him around. He opened his mouth to berate Pete's annoying habit of moving perfectly silent when he wanted to, and then closed it just as quickly as he realised that Pete's eyes had gone all black again. Without a word, he lifted both hands and traced the air above Patrick's shoulders, writing unknown sigils of power right in those spots.

Something snapped and sizzled, and a hot smell rushed through Patrick's kitchen. Pete snatched back his hands as if they had caught fire. Which they _had_ , and Patrick pounced away with a surprised yell. He wrenched open the top-cupboard which held all the drinking glasses, grabbed one and filled it with water from the skin. Turning, he threw it over Pete's hands, dousing the deep blue flames.

"It's a biggie," Pete stated, the both of them staring at the way his charred skin healed itself. "I know who cursed you, though."

"Who?" Patrick mopped at Pete's skin, even though by now there was no sign of injury, not at all. "Who would do this to me...and _why_?" For some reason, he didn't feel angry at whoever had decided to fuck with his life. He was mostly tired from a restless sleep on his lovely but frankly uncomfortable sofa. In addition, he was a whole lot keyed up from having his hands on Pete's. He hardly touched Pete unless he absolutely had to, and this felt like he stood at the edge of a cliff, poised to fly and fall.

Very carefully, Pete extricated himself from Patrick's grasp. "I'll tell you later, Stump." He held himself still, still not looking Patrick in the eye, and then stepped around him with his shoulders held in a tense line.

"Pete," Patrick tried, but Pete went out the doorway and hooked a sharp right in the direction of the guest-room. "For fuck's sake," he muttered under his breath. The only response was the cupboard door falling off its hinges.

+

"He'll tell you soon," Joe yelled. Patrick didn't dare touch his cellphone, which he had managed to set on loudspeaker mode before the curse set it on the fritz, too. He sat on the floor with his back against the sofa, the phone on the coffee-table in front of him. On Joe's end, there was a loud whirring buzz, like a small machine or a large, angry bee. Knowing Joe and Andy, and their concept of 'radical hangs', either option was quite likely. "Don't push him."

"I'm not pushing him," Patrick said and pressed both hands to his face. He sighed against his palms. "I know he'll tell me soon. I'm just…"

"Confused?" Joe shouted over the din. "Perplexed? Discombobulated?"

Patrick laughed, weakly. His laughter descended into groans as the pillow he sat on exploded in a flurry of cloth and stuffing.

Joe bellowed, "Dude, I hope you just didn't fart, or your house is totally fucked."

+

The door to the guest-room didn't disintegrate to dust when he knocked on it; that was good. What was also good was the muffled response from Pete; Patrick didn't hear any words at all, but he knew that particular pitch and tone meant he was cleared for admittance.

When he entered, he saw Pete in the middle of the bed, wrapped up so much in a comforter that only his eyes and the top of his head was visible. He appeared even smaller than usual. Once, Patrick had asked if his true shape was more or less like this human form and Pete had laughed in that nasal manner of his.

"If you wanted to know what I really looked like," he'd said, staring at Patrick with dark mirth, "you'd have to upgrade your perception to seven dimensions."

Now, Patrick glanced about the room: the massive suitcase lay open to one side of the door, and a mixture of clothing and some dark, syrupy-like shadows spilled out of it. He hoped that this particular eldritch substance didn't stain the carpet.

"You know who cursed me," he said, trying not to sound too reproachful and succeeding only very slightly. He cleared his throat and stared at the window, at Pete's scruffy sneakers placed rather neatly against the wall. "Just...out with it, whatever."

"I did," Pete answered in a low, flat tone and Patrick sighed. He'd known as well, at the very back of his mind, that section that was hard-wired to fit together words and music. Really, he should have felt a lot more anger than this low, simmering unhappiness. He had bound Pete against physically harming him; they'd never taken steps against Pete's powers manifesting in such minor misfortune. Patrick wondered it would have turned out if Pete actively hated him, but Pete hardly hated anyone, really.

"I wanted to make you feel as fucked up as I did," Pete continued, eyes downcast; it appeared as if he'd never expected this to happen, either. "It wasn't a conscious thing, okay?"

"Taking a hiatus was a decision taken by _all of us_ , " Patrick stressed, because that was the whole fucking issue and he didn't have any time to beat around it. He was a grown-ass man. He had a solo career to think of. He only caught a glimpse of the red light which flared up in Pete's eyes. Between one blink and the next, Pete was nose-to-nose with him, his hair and clothing swirling in a wind that didn't affect Patrick at all.

"Everything was always about _you_." Pete's voice wasn't a hiss, nor a roar, but emotion resonated above and below it. "If _you_ had said we stick together, we would have stuck together. Whatever it took."

"That's not fair." Patrick heard his voice shake, because Pete was far too close and his expression so wretched. "Don't put that all on me. We were unhappy, man. Even you... _especially_ you."

Pete swallowed and then took a very deliberate step back. He breathed out and in, hands clenched at his sides. Patrick watched as the red cooled to black, and then brown again.

"Human emotions are weird," Pete said, but it was with that twisting smile he wore when he wanted to be extra-charming. "I was totally my best when I was unhappy with you."

It had been a long day; maybe it had just been a really long life. Patrick exhaled shakily and rubbed at his temple, feeling the first stirrings of an ache. 

"Come on," Pete said, stepping close again and wrapping his arms around Patrick. He kissed right where Patrick still massaged the side of his head, breath skimming lightly over fingers before warm lips pressed onto a clammy patch of skin. This was why he used to hate when Pete tried to kiss his cheek on stage. When he did it in private, it was sweet and perfect. 

"I remove this torment, cast without thought," Pete continued in a very formal tone, even as his lips moved against Patrick's skin. Patrick had the impression that Pete wasn't speaking in any human language, though he understood the words. Maybe he comprehended intent and not the speech. In addition, he heard a distant whistling, like a kettle in another house. "I'm happy for you. I want you to be happy."

The world expanded around them and Patrick felt as if he unfurled with it, absorbing some kind of essentiality like a sponge. Everything popped in a muted manner. Patrick opened his eyes; he hadn't known he had closed them. 

"That's it," Pete said, and his smile was wide. He looked different...lighter. Luminous. His hands, now on Patrick's shoulders, squeeze gently and then slid down Patrick's arms. Pete's fingers encircled his wrists for a bare beat, before he pulled away and slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "It's gone now. Back to your bad habits, man."

He turned away, but Patrick reached out and snagged the sleeve of his shirt, hauling him around into a tight embrace.

"We'll be okay," he said against Pete's ear, and he could feel the glowing sweep of Pete's smile against the curve of his neck.

"Yeah," Pete said. "We'll be fucking golden."

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  _prompt by barefoot-starz@LJ: Pete/Patrick or Andy/Mixon. I'm a big fan of your bandom work. Especially your paranormal/supernatural/16 Candles type stuff. So... I guess anything bandom? But if it could be supernatural-ish or 16 Candles, that would be amazing_   
> 


End file.
